


The Divine Comedy

by sweetNsimple



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Chiyoh to the rescue, Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Hannibal is so done, Hospitals, Humor, Injuries complicate romance, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Season/Series 03 Finale, Serious Injuries, Will is a Mess, surviving the fall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 23:57:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15036143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetNsimple/pseuds/sweetNsimple
Summary: Hannibal moved just enough to grasp Will’s hand in his and squeeze.  Despite his broken collarbone and what he suspected was a deep gash on his forearm, Will held on tightly to Hannibal.Will thought, ‘I just wanted to kiss you.’His mind replied to him, ‘But you’re not allowed to have nice things.’It was painfully, sadly true.





	The Divine Comedy

Will woke up slowly, in agonizing pain, and total confusion. 

When he could form thoughts, his first was, ‘ _Hannibal must have decided to kill me after all.’_   He wondered, a small eternity later, if Hannibal had elected to murder him because Will had been about to try and kiss him. 

His other senses slowly trickled through.  He smelled salt and fish.  He felt the sand beneath him.  He heard the cry of seagulls.  He heard the lapping of waves.  He experienced his own splitting migraine and a thousand other pains.

Maybe he wasn’t dead.  Maybe Hannibal was taking his time with him.  After all, who else but them and “The Great Red Dragon” knew where Hannibal’s secret home was?  Hannibal had all the time in the world to amputate Will limb by limb like he had Gideon.

Will was reluctant to spread awareness to all ten toes and all ten fingers just in case he didn’t _have_ all ten toes and all ten fingers.  After an excruciating amount of time, a new thought surfaced.

_‘Hannibal wouldn’t leave good meat on the beach to spoil.’_

Depressing, but true.  Although it felt impossible, Will forced his eyes open.  He was greeted by a glaring sun overhead, the realization that he was extremely thirsty and possibly sunburnt, and an unfamiliar environment.  The only thing he could tell for sure was that he was on a beach, which he had figured out with his eyes closed. 

“Is this what you wanted?” a hoarse voice asked from nearby.  Turning his head made his brain splinter and his neck scream, but Will eventually managed to see Hannibal out of his periphery.  The older man was pale, even with the sun beaming down on him.  His clothes, soaked by the Atlantic, were also somehow more bloodstained than Will remembered.  His one arm was bent at a strange angle and his chest quivered with every gasping breath Hannibal took.  The gunshot wound was still bleeding sluggishly.

“For us to perish together in the Atlantic?  Two monsters never to see the light of day again?  _Thee it behoves to take another road… if from this savage place thou wouldst escape_?” Hannibal dared to quote Dante’s _The Divine Comedy_.  “And the road you chose was death?”

“W-what?” Will croaked.  He moved the arm closer to Hannibal, perhaps a hands width, before he realized that his collarbone was broken in a rolling haze of agony.  “What happened?”

“You happened.”  Hannibal almost smiled fondly at the clouds overhead.  “As you have for some time.  I was lost in the magnificence of your presence, of what we had done together.  I should have known that you would take such drastic action.”

“I didn’t realize,” Will hissed, feeling as if he was talking through the hole in his cheek, “that trying to kiss you would be considered a… a _drastic_ … action.”  Will had been clinging to Hannibal, cheek to Hannibal’s chest, listening to the older man breathe.  His eyes had been on Francis, on the blood that looked black in the moonlight.  He had been thinking, from what he could recall, of the nature of the enemy within and letting himself have the things he wanted, regardless of morals and societal pressures.  He had thought, _‘I want to kiss him,’_ and had decided to have what he wanted.  “The question becomes… what did _you_ do in response?” 

Hannibal blinked at the sky, and then at Will.  It irked Will that Hannibal appeared to have full mobility of his neck.

“Will,” Hannibal said.  “What is the last… last thing you remember?”

Will groaned softly.  “We were on the edge of the bluff...  I put my arm around you...  I w-was going to kiss you, but then –” he frowned at his own blank memory.  He thought he vaguely remembered… “Hannibal,” he said.

“Will.”

“Did we… fall off the bluff?”

“In a w-way.”

“Are you… accusing me of… _pulling us_ … over the bluff…?”

“I am indeed, yes, Will.  That is… exactly what I am saying.  Neither of us are dead, miraculously… but it is s-safe to assume that we have broken many bones betwe-… between us and we may die here on this beach unless… Chiyoh finds us first.”

“Chiyoh?”

“I called her as I was getting the wine…  Let her know where we were and to come get us.”

“Of course.  Well, Hannibal, before you accuse me of trying to kill us, I have… a c-confession to make.”

His voice was dwindling to a pained whisper, as was Hannibal’s.  He couldn’t imagine how much of the Atlantic Ocean they had drank, or how long they had been grilling on the shore.  He wondered just how many more injuries they had gained from the fall on top of fighting with Francis.

“What is… your confession?”

“I did not _pull_ us over… on purpose, that is.  I passed out and… _accidentally_ pushed us over the bluff.”

There was a brief moment of silence before Hannibal hummed.  “That would explain many things, actually.  I did think that… you may have been unconscious before we hit the water, but it was not worth thinking about at the t-time.”

Will would have scowled at Hannibal if he could make his body cooperate.  He felt indignant at the claim.  After all he had gone through to get Hannibal released from the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, this felt like a great _discourtesy_.  “You think I tried to kill us…?”

“Yes.”

“I was unconscious the whole time.”

“As you say.”

“ _As I was_.”

“As you say.”

 _‘Pretentious asshole,’_ Will thought.  Will said, “How did I get to be on this beach, alive, with you?”

“How did we not die upon i-impact with the water, or… become impaled on any of the rocks?  Fate… has other plans for us.”

“Did fate d-deliver me to land by your side?...  Or did you?”

The silence was condemning.

“You saved my life.”

“Even I can have regrets, Will.”

“Don’t.”  Will managed to smile, somehow, even though it was a terrible decision.  “So you didn’t try to kill me for trying to kiss you?”

“I would have very much welcomed a kiss...  If coitus had followed, that would have been welcomed as well.”

“I don’t think… e-either of us would have been up for sex, even without… a deadly fall into the ocean.”

“Adrenaline was high…  I, for o-one, was highly aroused by you painted in blood, bathed in the moonlight.”

Will barked a laugh, and then hissed through the resulting agony that rang throughout his entire skeleton and face.

“It would be best for both of us to stay as still as possible for the moment,” Hannibal husked. 

“We’re not even going to try and crawl?”

“We would not crawl very far before e-exacerbating o-our injuries… and passing out.”

“We’re very broken right now, aren’t we?”

“Extremely so.”

Will went to reply, _‘So it all depends on Chiyoh finding us and not locals who may turn us in to the FBI,’_ but his voice had finally petered to nothing.  He wheezed and had nothing else he could say.

Hannibal moved just enough to grasp Will’s hand in his and squeeze.  Despite his broken collarbone and what he suspected was a deep gash on his forearm, Will held on tightly to Hannibal.

Will thought, _‘I just wanted to kiss you.’_

His mind replied to him, _‘But you’re not allowed to have nice things.’_

It was painfully, sadly true.

~::~

Hannibal’s hand had gone limp in his.  Will was the one left conscious this time to deal with the elements they had been thrust into and he was finding that he did not like it at all.  After Hannibal had passed out, Will had actually _tried_ to look around and see if maybe he could move them, if even a few feet, to a shadier spot further away from the ocean spray.  Moving his head felt like his skull balanced on a spike, meaning that he did not get the chance to see very much of the landscape.  When he tried to crawl using his free arm to pull him, his other hand holding onto Hannibal, he realized – vision blurring and dark splotches overtaking sight – that Hannibal had been right about their condition.  Their only option was to stay put.

He gauged it at being afternoon when the sun was unexpectedly and blessedly blocked out by clouds and a cool breeze breathed over them, foretelling of a rain shower.  Rain could, at this point, only help their situation.  He and Hannibal smelled like corpses and the crabs had come pinching at them.  They were also severely dehydrated.  Will felt as if he might turn to salt. 

Will could hear the stag with the raven feathers _breathing_ , so close by.  He heard the sand as the stag kicked it aside with each languid step.  Overhead, he saw a red dragon disappear into the storm clouds.  The first clap of thunder, he mistook for the dragon roaring. 

Rain would be good. 

It had just begun to sprinkle when he heard sand swishing, as if someone was walking toward them.  The stag had disappeared.  Was it the Wendigo?  The dark creature with the halo of antlers? 

“You still live,” Chiyoh said in her careful English.  She stood over Will and Hannibal and looked down at them.  “I wonder if you two together are immortal.”

 _‘We might be,’_ Will thought, but could only cough in response.  He was almost familiar with the pain that coursed through his veins like blood at this point.

“I have a truck,” Chiyoh informed him.  “And a plane waiting to take you both to Amsterdam.”  She was quiet for a moment.  “It will be better to take you to Canada.  It is much closer and you both need immediate medical attention.”

Will’s cough now was a bark of laughter.  _‘No kidding,’_ he wondered.  At the least, their savior had arrived and they had a chance at a full recovery.  He was uncertain of how Chiyoh was going to get them from the beach to her truck without help, though.

Chiyoh soothed that concern for him by gingerly turning Hannibal onto his belly – his hand slipped from Will’s and Will instinctively tried to snatch it back before he remembered how terrible an idea that was – and then lifting him into a fireman’s carry. 

Will gawked as she carried Hannibal out of sight. 

When she came for him, he was breathing harshly through his nose, trying to prepare himself for being turned over onto his front where it seemed like every broken bone he had was located.

“This will hurt a great deal,” Chiyoh pointed out, which was kind of her and entirely unnecessary.

She was careful, at least, in turning Will over.  No amount of care in the world could have stopped him from screaming when his left leg moved, dry and burnt as he was.  And when she began to lift him, straining his collarbone and ribs?  Well, all Will remembered was a blinding flash of light and then –

It was the beeping that woke him up.

Face scrunching – bad idea, said the knife wound through his cheek and what felt like second-degree burns – and groaning, Will managed to open his eyes with herculean effort. 

This was definitely a hospital. 

In the other bed was Hannibal, speaking softly to Chiyoh, who sat in the visitor’s chair. They paused in their discussion when they saw that Will was awake.

“We are at the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Health Care Centre Trauma Clinic,” Hannibal answered without being asked.  “As tourists on vacation to celebrate our upcoming nuptials, we were attacked by bigots and tortured.  Concerned locals found us abandoned on Kits Beach, where the police believe we may have washed up from a nearby cliff.  Before I forget, you are Hugh Darcy and I am Dr. Mads Mikkelsen.  We have been together for four and a half years now.” 

“I came as soon as Dr. Mikkelsen called me,” Chiyoh added.  “As a concerned friend.”

“You have been unconscious in that bed for approximately thirty-two hours,” Hannibal clarified.  “It has been two days since you pulled us over the bluff.”

“You make it sound like I did it on purpose.” 

“I am not totally convinced that it was an accident.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Will asked Chiyoh.  “To make sure I don’t make another attempt on his life?”

Chiyoh gave one slow nod.  “Among other reasons.” 

“One step forward, two steps back,” Will muttered.

“Actually, it was one step to the side and almost three hundred feet down.”

“By _God_ , keep reminding me lest I forget.”

“I plan to,” Hannibal told him.  “For a very long time.”

Will paused.  A sense of _domesticity_ , surprisingly, made him feel soft around the edges.  It was that, or the very _good_ pain killers he was on.  “The rest of our lives?”

“At least until one of us kills the other.  I believe it is my turn now to make an attempt on your life, is that right?”

“You are being disgustingly _discourteous_ right now, Dr. Lecter.”

“Please.  Call me Dr. Mikkelsen.”

Will let his eyes slide shut again, smiling despite his injuries. 

“Goodnight, my darling Will,” Hannibal’s voice gently called to him.

“Please,” Will slurred.  “Call me Hugh.”   

~::~

Here they were in Florence, one again, as if almost five years had not passed since the fateful night Hannibal had carved his smile into Will.  Will tilted his head back, eyes closed, and imagined that this _did_ immediately follow their last dinner together in Hannibal’s former home, where Hannibal had asked him to run away that night.  He imagined that, instead of fighting himself, instead of clinging to some dying form of morality, he had listened to the thrum of his heart and said _yes_.  He let himself imagine for only a few moments before releasing the thought, like a fish back into the stream.  It slipped away, with the current, and he cast his lure again. 

They were finally where they were meant to be.  As if no crime had ever been committed, they basked in the light that filtered through the large windows of the Norman Palace of Palermo, unbothered and unsuspected.  Will sat in one seat and, across the small aisle left for walking, sat Hannibal.  It had felt good, after months of recuperating and moving about, to walk to the cathedral together, leaving Chiyoh to her own devices for the first time in a long time.  They rested now, calm and at peace. 

It felt like hours before they stood up and departed with nary a word to one another.  Leaving the silent worship of the cathedral behind, they meandered into the bustle of pedestrian traffic. 

Hannibal pulled his phone from his pocket.  He glanced at a new message.  “Chiyoh has spotted Jack coming our way.”

“He won’t give up,” Will said.  “He will keep coming for us.”

“Not if we go to him,” Hannibal whispered, insidious, and tilted a look at Will that was promising.

Will considered this.  There was a pang in his chest at the thought of killing Jack.  And then, a sense of welcoming.  Jack was suffering a great deal.  He chased Will and Hannibal because there was nothing else in his life to do, because he had convinced himself the last thing he would do on this earth was bring them to justice. 

Will and Hannibal could put him to rest.  Jack had cast the ashes of his beloved wife Bella into the Ponte Sante Trinita.  In Will’s mind, he imagined him and Hannibal taking Jack down together as a team, as _mates_ , as they had taken down Francis together, and then returning Jack to Bella.  They would put Jack in a boat on the river, dressed finely for his reunion with his dearly departed wife.  In his hands, he would hold his heart to give to her, his eyes as they had always been only for her, and the tongue that had so sweetly for years called to her, _Bella, Bella, Bella_.  It would be saccharine.  Romantic…  Intimate.

“Not today, but soon” Will whispered.  He cocked his head toward Hannibal.  “We should give him what he wants.  Give him closure.”

Hannibal’s eyes flashed with interest, his lips curling up.  He remembered those words spoken at an earlier time.

Will smiled in turn.  “I want to tell you of my design.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am going to be honest, I have no idea how high the bluffs over the Atlantic Ocean were that they fell off of. I did try looking up what is the highest someone can jump from into water and survive and, apparently, it can come down to a bit of luck as high divers have dropped as much as 192 feet, but there are known survivors who had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge at 220 feet (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-maximum-height-from-which-humans-could-jump-into-water-and-survive).   
> Here is the link to part of Dante’s The Divine Comedy - (https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/inferno-canto-i).   
> I had the thought after watching the season 3 finale (more than once), that it seemed odd that Will would warn Bedelia, “Ready or not, here he comes”, and then choose to push himself and Hannibal over a cliff. There is a deleted scene for the finale where Will and Hannibal are at the cathedral in Florence after the fall, both in suits and visibly at peace. When the scene changes, Jack Crawford had gone to the cathedral, but Will and Hannibal were gone by that time. This means that, after surviving the fall, they managed to live happily ever after. So I wondered – what if that had been an accident? They were both pretty horribly beat up, let’s be honest.


End file.
